I can’t hold my arms up

There I was, browsing through the Ikea catalog, when I came upon this remarkable chair.

On first blush it looks like those ill-fated ergonomic chairs of the 1980s, but it’s really just a bench at two heights. The user is meant to straddle the lower height and use the upper to rest his arms while holding a videogame controller, avoiding the strenuous and annoying work of holding up his own arms.

Even more remarkable is the seat’s name: Jesper. No matter the commonality of this forename, surely we can only conclude that this product represents the Swedish company’s attempt to take advantage of fellow scandinavian and well-known games researcher Jesper Juul.

The difference between him and his namesake bench? Juul can hold his own arms up while playing videogames.

About

Ian Bogost is an author and game designer. He is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic.